'This is the way, laughed the great God Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river,)
'The only way, since Gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great God Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great God Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,-
For the reed which grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

THE FORCED RECRUIT.

SOLFERINO, 1859.

In the ranks of the Austrian you found him,
He died with his face to you all;

Yet bury him here where around him
You honour your bravest that fall.
Venetian, fair-featured and slender,

He lies shot to death in his youth,
With a smile on his lips, over-tender
For any mere soldier's dead mouth.
No stranger, and yet not a traitor,

Though alien the cloth on his breast,
Underneath it how seldom a greater
Young heart, has a shot sent to rest!
By your enemy tortured and goaded

To march with them, stand in their file,
His musket (see) never was loaded,
He facing your guns with that smile!

I had

As orphans yearn on to their mothers,
He yearned to your patriot bands;-
'Let me die for our Italy, brothers,

If not in your ranks, by your hands!
'Aim straightly, fire steadily! spare me
A ball in the body which may
Deliver my heart here, and tear me

This badge of the Austrian away!'

So thought he, so died he this morning.
What then? many others have died.
Ay, but easy for men to die scorning

The death-stroke, who fought side by side:-
One tricolor floating above them;

Struck down 'mid triumphant acclaims

Of an Italy rescued to love them

And blazon the brass with their names.

but he without witness or honour,

There, shamed in his country's regard,
With the tyrants who march in upon her,
Died faithful and passive: 't was hard.
'T was sublime. In a cruel restriction
Cut off from the guerdon of sons,
With most filial obedience, conviction,
His soul kissed the lips of her guns.

That moves you? Nay, grudge not to show it,
While digging a grave for him here:
The others who died, says your poet,

Have glory, let him have a tear.

[From Aurora Leigh.]

AURORA'S HOME

little chamber in the house,

As green as any privet-hedge a bird

Might choose to build in, though the nest itself

Could show but dead brown sticks and straws; the walls

Were green, the carpet was pure green, the straight

Small bed was curtained greenly, and the folds
Hung green about the window which let in
The out-door world with all its greenery.
You could not push your head out and escape
A dash of dawn-dew from the honey-suckle,

But so you were baptized into the grace

And privilege of seeing. . . .

...

First, the lime,

(I had enough there, of the lime, be sure,—
My morning-dream was often hummed away
By the bees in it); past the lime, the lawn,
Which, after sweeping broadly round the house,
Went trickling through the shrubberies in a stream
Of tender turf, and wore and lost itself

Among the acacias, over which you saw

The irregular line of elms by the deep lane

Which stopped the grounds and dammed the overflow Of arbutus and laurel. Out of sight

The lane was; sunk so deep, no foreign tramp

Nor drover of wild ponies out of Wales

Could guess if lady's hall or tenant's lodge

Dispensed such odours,-though his stick well-crooked
Might reach the lowest trail of blossoming briar
Which dipped upon the wall. Behind the elms,
And through their tops, you saw the folded hills
Striped up and down with hedges (burly oaks
Projecting from the line to show themselves)
Through which my cousin Romney's chimney smoked
As still as when a silent month in frost

Breathes, showing where the woodlands hid Leigh Hall; While, far above, a jut of table-land,

A promontory without water stretched,—

You could not catch it if the days were thick,

Or took it for a cloud; but, otherwise,

The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve
And use it for an anvil till he had filled

The shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts,
Protesting against night and darkness :-then,
When all his setting trouble was resolved

To a trance of passive glory, you might see
In apparition on the golden sky

(Alas, my Giotto's background!) the sheep run
Along the fine clear outline, small as mice
That run along a witch's scarlet thread.

THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND.

I learnt to love that England. Very oft, Before the day was born, or otherwise Through secret windings of the afternoons, I threw my hunters off and plunged myself Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag Will take the waters, shivering with the fear And passion of the course. And when at last Escaped, so many a green slope built on slope Betwixt me and the evening's house behind, I dared to rest, or wander, in a rest Made sweeter for the step upon the grass, And view the ground's most gentle dimplement . (As if God's finger touched, but did not press In making England) such an up and down Of verdure, nothing too much up or down, A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky Can stoop so tenderly and the wheatfields climb; Such nooks of valleys lined with orchises, Fed full of noises by invisible streams; And open pastures where you scarcely tell White daisies from white dew,—at intervals The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,I thought my father's land was worthy too Of being my Shakespeare's.

Ofter we walked only two,

If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me.

We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced. We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched : Say rather, scholars upon different tracks,

And thinkers disagreed, he, overfull

Of what is, and I, haply, overbold

For what might be.

But then the thrushes sang,
And shook my pulses and the elms' new leaves;
At which I turned, and held my finger up,
And bade him mark that, howsoe'er the world
Went ill, as he related, certainly

The thrushes still sang in it. At the word
His brow would soften,—and he bore with me
In melancholy patience, not unkind,

While breaking into voluble ecstasy

I flattered all the beauteous country round,
As poets use, the skies, the clouds, the fields,
The happy violets hiding from the roads
The primroses run down to, carrying gold;
The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out
Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths
'Twixt dripping ash-boughs,-hedgerows all alive
With birds and gnats and large white butterflies,
Which look as if the May-flower had caught life
And palpitated forth upon the wind;

Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,
Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills;
And cattle grazing in the watered vales,
And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods,
And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,
Confused with smell of orchards. 'See,' I said,
'And see! is God not with us on the earth?
And shall we put him down by aught we do?
Who says there's nothing for the poor and vile
Save poverty and wickedness? behold!'

And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped
And clapped my hands, and called all very fair.

A SIMILE.

Every age,

Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned
By those who have not lived past it. We'll suppose
Mount Athos carved, as Alexander schemed,